Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Good morning. It is Friday morning, September 26th. So we are approaching October fast, approaching October, and the fall, the cooler weather is here. But hey, we had 17,000 questions written into the podcast@composix.org, and that's a slight hyperbole, only slight hyperbole, but my favorite one is the one that we're gonna answer first. And my favorite one is only because of where it comes from. It's a good question, but this is actually from somebody out of the country. This is from somebody who lives not even in the continental United States or continental North America. This is somebody who lives all the way over in South Africa writing in a ian to us. Wow. Yeah. So Ben wrote in a question and he said, Hey, I love listening to the DBR readings. So super cool. We didn't know that, that you were listening, Ben. We're glad that you're listening. We're glad that that this is a reach and a help even outside of the walls of our church. Yes, we are. I guess we're international now. We can say internationally acclaimed by one person. No, but he said I love listening to the DBR. Your church's passion is inspiring. I'm, thank you. A chair of a group of reformed. Church youth leaders. Ah, he said, could you please discuss if possible ways to inspire youth to study the Bible more and to be more interested in it? It's a problem we have, and I've seen it in a lot of other youth as well. They don't have a care, a caring attitude like they're not. Interested in reading the Bible and pursuing spiritual things. They're chasing short term pleasures in a lot of places. He gives the example of social media. So how can we, he says as elders or pastors, leaders, help them in the right direction without pushing them away from the gospel but still be firm and make sure that we're true to scripture. Pastor Rod, this is, I think, right up your alley. You spent most of your ministry career prior to coming here to serve as the associate pastor and even a portion of your time here ministering to students. So what did you find was helpful? And how might this help Ben in inspiring our students, our young people, to care about spiritual things and the word of God being one of the main parts of that man, Ben, and friends, please keep at it. We need people like yourself to stay the course to continue praying and sowing seeds. But I have several suggestions and I'll start with two that are book suggestions. These were helpful to me. The first one is called atheism. It's a great term, and I think that best describes some of what we're seeing in our youth today, atheism. They're apathetic toward theistic things, and that one's by Kyle Brashears, and the other one is by a guy, I forget. I don't even know how to say his name. I'm just gonna tell you his book title. It's called Overcoming Apathy by Uche. Unor, it's gonna, that's, I'm gonna go with that. Good. If I say it confidently, that's good. I think people will say, that sounds right. Yes, that sounds right. Overcoming Apathy and Apathy is in both two books that deal with this subject that you're exactly talking about here. So a couple of things from my experience in youth ministry, and I'll just let you have. A couple things off the top of my head that were helpful for me. First of all we don't stop doing the right thing. We don't stop feeding them the word of God. We don't stop utilizing our tools, which is of course, the spirit empowered. Word of God preached faithfully and boldly to our students. So that's the first thing. Second thing though, and this is gonna be a slightly different take. I think one of the things that we can do best for our students who are apathetic is show them why they should not be apathetic. And part of the way that I would try to do that is I would do everything I could to immerse myself in their culture so I could speak their language and then help them see, you see the things that you're dealing with here. Here's how the Bible talks to that thing, that yearning, that idea that that zeitgeist that you're going through, the Bible talks to that thing. A lot of people have mixed emotions about Tim Keller and I do too. Not everything that he said do I love, but here's what he did really well. He spoke to his culture with exceptional clarity and he would point them to the scriptures all the time and he would point them to Christ as being the solution to their deep felt desires and their yearnings. And I think that's what we're trying to do with our particular audience of young people. There are a lot of people that say that our young people today are going through some kind of revival. Young men in particular are becoming more aware of what's happening in their world and they're looking for answers, particularly in and through the church. And I think that's phenomenal. I would try to capitalize on that. I would, I might use videos to help draw attention to some of the current issues. I would do whatever I could, and I did that when I was in youth ministry. I would always find whatever's relevant. I subscribed to newsletters that help me stay on top of that. What's the slang? What are some of the videos that they're watching? What are some of the shows that they're paying attention to? What are some of the books that are striking their fancy? I wanna know what those are. I'm gonna invest in them, and then I wanna show them how scripture speaks better than what their culture is speaking to them. I didn't always succeed at this. I was be honest with you on that point, but I never gave up. I always wanted to find ways bridges to help them bridge the gap between what they think the Bible is and how the Bible speaks to their everyday relevant situations. That's a short thing. I could say a lot more about that, but that's some of what I would do. I wanna sow seeds of doubt that secular what, or whatever authority they're appealing to. That their authority isn't sufficient in the same way that Jesus is sufficient in the same way that his word sufficient. I never gave up that fight and that's what I would do. Handful of things. Pastor pj, your turn fill us in. What would you do? Yeah, I agree. The bridge students our college age guys I did and I think. In fact as you're answering and we're talking about this I was thinking about what we are gonna be preaching on this Sunday in one Peter chapter two where Peter talks about in verses two and three, he says newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by you may grow up into salvation. And then he provides this caveat. If indeed you've tasted that the Lord is good and that's really such a key cog in all of this. If you're dealing with students who are regenerate, then there should be a desire for the word. And I think it's, even we've talked about Pastor Rod, you and I were just talking about it on on Thursday as we were meeting together, this idea that. If there's not a desire there's something off, something's amiss. I think there's an appropriate way for you as their shepherd, as their pastor to even impress that upon them to say, look and if you're professing faith in Christ and you don't desire to grow, then there's a problem here. And in one Peter two, two, and three is a great passage to look to, to say, look, this is what should be evident in our lives. The flip side of that is equally true, and I think that's probably the case with the majority of the young people that you're. Pursuing is if they aren't in Christ, you're calling a dead person to do what only a live person can really do. That's right. And and so I say that on two sides. Number one, don't grow too frustrated. Don't think that it's about a gimmick or it's about anything else. I agree with you. Yeah, be engaged, be relevant, appeal to everything that you possibly can. But at the end of the day, really understand that what you're calling them to desire is something that God has to rot within them to begin with a rot. And pray for. Them. Prayer is gonna be huge. You, your elders your team. It sounds like you're serving on a team there, and I trust that you guys already are doing this, but pray that God would bring that revival to these students. Pray that God would create that desire within them and pray that salvation will come. And for those that have professed faith yeah, again, I would say put the finger in the chest of them, especially those young men and say, Hey, it's time to lead in this God's calling you to desire his word. This is not a, an option. This is a command to long for these things. Are you doing that? And what does it look like? How can we help you in that pursuit? Yeah, you've heard the saying you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, but you can salt his oats. Boom. Just salt the oats. Salt the oats. Make them thirsty. I want salt the oats. Exactly. I'm sowing seeds of doubt. Yeah. In whatever framework it is that they're appealing to. Even if they're not aware of it, and maybe that all by itself is a helpful point, just to help them become aware of what it is that they're putting their trust in. I agree. The spirit has to make them alive, to make 'em hungry, to make 'em thirsty. For sure. And so that might be the very first step. Pray for their salvation. Continue to so seed for that sake. But don't minimize. Your role in helping to understand their world and draw bridges from the scriptures to their life to show them where where scripture speaks specifically to their situation. 'cause it's great, the Bible speaks to our longings, it speaks to everything that we deal with, and it does so be so much better than any other offers that are on the table. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get to a few of the other thousands of questions that we have. We'll hit those tomorrow morning, so be sure that you're back listening to us again tomorrow 'cause we're gonna hit a few more questions that we're submitted. One one about demons. Oh, that, what's the appetite? Tune in again. Tomorrow we're gonna provide a definitive answer, but right now let's jump into Nehemiah one through five and our DBR for today. We're in a new. We are dealing with a book that, again, was originally part of the book of Ezra. And so there's overlapping themes here. This is dealing with the return, Nehemiah is gonna come back to deal with the broken down walls of the city. And so that's one reason you, one way that you can remember. What is Nehemiah about what the walls were only Nehi. So Nehi Maya, he's dealing with the walls. Hey, that's a throwback to my days in, in Sunday school growing up where they would teach us the book themes. But what I love about Nehemiah, and I think what I realized more. So again, this time, and I do every single time, is his leadership that he has as he as he returns to a broken down city. But even before that, when he receives report that the walls are broken down, he knows that he's gonna have to request absence to go back and deal with this. And so you'll note in chapter one that even before he, he has this encounter with the king, which he knows is coming. He is praying, he's gonna pray in verse 11 at the end of chapter one, and he's gonna say, Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant. Give success to me today and grant me mercy in the sight of this man. He's the king's cut bear. And so in chapter two, you have this situation where he is not looking. Healthy like a cut bearer should look because the cut bearer's job in part was to taste the wine and make sure it wasn't poisoned. And so you didn't want a cut bearer who looked ill or looked off. And so the king recognizes that Nehemiah doesn't look good and says you're healthy. So what's wrong, Nehemiah? And again, bold leadership. He says, king, this is what's going on, and I'd like to ask, leave to go back and deal with this because the walls of my, my, the people of the city, of my people are broken down and I need to give attention to building those. And so the king, because of God's hand of favor on his life. A agrees and sends him back. But Nehemiah is a great book and it opens this way of good leadership principles for us. And what we're about to see is some good vision casting leadership that really is compelling to the people to wanna follow his lead. What I love most about Nehemiah, in addition to the fact that he does excellently in terms of his leadership. But he probably leads best in the fact that he's a spiritual man. Yes, he's a man of prayer and you're gonna see this all throughout his book. I love this about him. Even at the end of his book, he's gonna say, oh Lord, you gotta take care of this. So I love this. Pay attention to the fact that he prays all the time, and his prayer life is an expression of his love for God and his love for his people Pay special notes to his prayer life. In chapter two, one of the first things that he does when he gets to Jerusalem is he doesn't rally the troops and just say, let's charge, willy-nilly at this task in front of us. But instead, he goes out and he prepares for the task at hand first himself. And again, another good sign of leadership is that he's prepared before he tries to lead other people. So he goes out by himself, he inspects the walls, and he realizes what is facing them and what needs to be done so that then when he does rally everybody, he casts the vision for the people and says, this is what we have to do. This is what we're up against. Here's the game plan. And this is. What we're gonna end up doing. And so we see that in chapter two. He casts the vision there in verse 17. Come let us build the wall of Jerusalem, and we see the response. The vision is understood, it's embraced when the people say, let's rise up and build verse 18. So they strengthen their hands for the good at work. But then we also see another thing that often attends good leadership, and that is opposition. Because sand ballot and Tobiah, these two rascals that show up on the scene, they are going to try to stop what's happening because they don't want Jerusalem to be strengthened. And so they are going to end up mocking and geering, and they're gonna take even more drastic measures as the book proceeds there. Yeah. I also really the fact that Nehemiah examines the situation. He doesn't just jump to it. He's thinking, he's praying, he's plotting. He says, I told no one what God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. That's in verse 12. He's doing his due diligence by preparing himself and preparing the people for what needs to happen. I love this because it showcases his thoughtfulness. He's not just charging as Pastor Pia just noted here. He's thinking, and part of your job as a leader for your family, as a leader for your youth ministry, as a leader for any part of your society, is to do a lot of good thinking. You have to do the thinking. And if you're not gonna do the thinking, you shouldn't be leading. Part of your job is to think, and that's what Nehemiah does. So admirably here. I love to see this, but you again, to your point. Toby and Sandy man. Not good, but in fact, if you have opposition, that's probably a good sign. You're leading the right way. Yeah. Yeah. As long as your opposition's not from like godly people, that's touche. Nehemiah chapter three. Then what we find here is a list of the people that rose up and and were building the wall and completing the project at hand. And so the vision was being executed. And so the people were following the lead. They were doing the work. They were working in laboring together. They were working side by side. This is a communal effort here. This is not just one or two people going forward and doing this. They're all doing this together, and that's important too, that we see just the fact that this was. Everybody involved in this. And that's another sign of Nehemiah's strong leadership here is you got, he got buy-in from the people. And the people were willing to do this. Even with the opposition. They were still saying, Hey we're gonna follow your lead in this, in chapter four, the opposition is still there and continuing. And yet what we find is the people are gonna be successful. Verse four we built the wall and the wall was joined together to half of its height. So it's not. Fully done yet, but they're making progress in spite of the opposition, they are still making progress. And Nehemiah, and this is another element of good leadership, and it's something that I'm reminded of the need to do for us as we're planting and building this church, is Nehemiah doesn't let up. Once they, they get half the wall done. It's not like he's Hey, good job guys. We've gotten half the wall up. We're gonna just assume that the rest is gonna happen. In fact, he's still pursuing and still recasting even the vision for the people to understand the import. Here, he says in verse 14, I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the. Rest of the people. Don't be afraid of the opposition. Remember the Lord who's great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. So Nehemiah's reminding them of what's at stake. And again, that's part of casting a vision and getting people to, to follow you, is you have to let them know this is what's at stake if we fail to accomplish what we're trying to do here. And so in our context as we're here planting a church, we've got people in our neighborhoods, people in our communities, our workplaces, our our local Starbucks and grocery stores. They need Christ. We're here to be a lampstand. We're here to carry out the mission of reaching teaching and training. And that's part of what we have to be doing. And God's been growing our church recently, which is great, but we can't grow complacent. We have to make sure that we're always saying, okay, we need to reach more people. We need to go after more souls. We need to stay on mission. And I think in chapter four, we see a good example of Nehemiah doing that with the Israelites saying, the wall's halfway done. Great. That's awesome. But we're not done yet, so keep going, lest we end up failing with what God has called us to do. Yeah. Speaking of reaching teaching, training, we got our new shirts in, we did. If you come on Sunday, you might be able to pick up our brand spanking new shirts. And I do think they're quite attractive. They are. So you're gonna wanna be there. They are. I feel like somebody had a hand in designing those. I can't. I did not. Did you not? Yes. You commissioned it. I commissioned it. I cast a vision, but the product is not mine. I can tell you that much. They do look good. So well done to our designer. You know who you are. Yep. If he's even listening. If he's even listening, yeah. Alright, verse nine. Lemme just put this out. Guys, I love Nehemiah's prayer life. I just gotta say, I, I find of all the things that are admirable about him, respectable and enjoyable to read, he encourages me to be a man of greater prayer. Verse nine says, and we pray to our God. I love this. He's, the people are coming to fights. There's confusion, he says, and we prayed. We prayed to the Lord. It's almost as if every turn in his leadership, he's finding a reason to pray. He's finding it. He's not just, he's not just doing his thing and getting distracted. He's saying, let me just find a reason to pray here. Oh, here's something. Let's pray about that. Here's another. Let's pray about that. But verse nine is super cool because you see that there's not a false dichotomy between praying and working. In fact, he says Here, we prayed to our God. And we set a guard as protection against them day and night. There's no such thing as. As a as a, I don't know. There's no such thing as a prayer where it eliminates your ability to be practical. Yeah. Prayer does not eliminate practicality. Prayer empowers the practicality and makes it useful. And so here in verse nine, you see a beautiful balance between him saying, let's trust God and let's do the work. Let's not pretend like trusting God means we throw our hands in the air. Trusting God doesn't mean closing your eyes and taking your hands off the steering wheel. Trusting God means praying to the Lord. Keeping your hands on the steering wheel and continuing to drive forward. I love that you see this in EMI's leadership. Take note once more. Yeah, let go. Let God not the principle. Nope. Yeah, not anywhere really. Unless, until the rapture, which by the way, didn't happen this week. I know a lot of people were saying it was gonna happen this week. Didn't happen this week. I'm glad to see that. Yeah. I'm not glad on the one hand and on the other hand. I'm also glad that it, can you imagine how smug they would be in heaven right now? Yeah. I'd be like, see, we told you guys, no one knew that they were our but us. We knew we were the exception. We were the exception. No. Yeah. Chapter four is just a cool chapter. Even. So Spurgeon would end up putting out a weekly magazine or a publication called The Sword and the Travel And it's taken from here. Yeah. 'cause that's what they were doing. They were building the wall with a weapon in hand. And they were ready to fight if they needed to, but they were doing the work that the Lord needed them to do. Alright. Chapter five. That'll preach the, the threats were not just external, but also what we find in chapter five internal. And Nehemiah as a good and full orbed leader understood that he needed to not just look outside at what might be damaging to their efforts, but also internally. And what he found internally was the people were not. Executing justice the way that God had called them to execute justice. The people who were doing things like lending money and charging exorbitant interest, and they were abusing the poor and so forth and so on. And so Nehemiah's gonna confront them on that. But the other thing Nehemiah's gonna do in chapter five is he's gonna set the example of what they should be doing. So again, good leadership here. He calls out the problem. Lives the solution. And that's what we see here in the first half of chapter five. He's indicting the problem in chapter, the rest part of chapter five. He's saying, look at what I've done. I've been generous. I've been doing what I'm telling you need to be doing. And that is, I've been giving, I've been feeding, I've been generous with my resources. Let's not draw the wrath of God and put. Our labors in jeopardy by disobeying what he's called us to do, let's be faithful to what he's called us to do instead. Yeah. I love his integrity. I love the fact that he models for them what it should look like. But I wanna point to your attention to verse 15. He says, I didn't do I didn't do what they did because. Of the fear of God, his actions were not motivated from simple nobility. It's not just him trying to set a good leadership example. It's because he loves the Lord. And I think that for you and for me, ought to be the motivating factor for all the things that we do in Christ. It ought to be for love for the Lord. It ought to be something that is because of our piety and not because of the practicality alone, although it. Practicality here. Nehemiah is not too far above doing what's practical, but it's ultimately because of his piety, his love for the Lord. That drives it. Yeah. Let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. God make us men of integrity, women of integrity, and Lord, may we pursue you out of, as Pastor Rod was just saying, out of a fear of God, out of the rights and proper fear that we should possess, that does impact the way that we live our lives. And so God, we ask that you would be kind to us gracious. It to us towards that end, and enable us by your spirit to live in such a manner. And so we ask that you do that for us and for our church. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye everybody. Bye.

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Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said